the piece about losing uh my best friend jimmy losing kurt um losing my father i waited that was
the last piece that i wrote because i was afraid to write it you know dave it's dave from the uk
hey dave hey nice to see you listen let's go for 16 grammys two emmys seven uk number one albums
a career that spans all the way from nirvana's never mind in 1991 through to the foo fighters
medicine at midnight in 2021 and now you have turned your considerable talents and your words
restless creativity to literature dave grohl the storyteller tales of life and music is out
now what inspired you to take on this project of this kind at this time wow uh first of all thank
you for the most incredible bio i've ever had written in my entire life i appreciate that we had
finished making the foo fighters record medicine at midnight and it was our 25th anniversary last
year so we were getting ready to do this world tour we were going to take the show on the road do
stadiums all over the world and then everything shut down right in march of last year and i'm
creatively restless all the time i always need something to do i always come up with some sort of
project so when everything stopped i was just like left with absolutely nothing to do and panicked i
can't just like make lasagna for my kids five nights a week i have to i have to be able to
do something so i started this instagram page dave's true stories and i just started writing
these little short stories about these incredible experiences i've had for no reason other than to
have something to do but also give people like maybe six or seven minutes of joy in an otherwise
very dreary day after a few of the stories i thought okay well i think we're gonna be here a
while you know and nobody knew how long this this lockdown how long everything would be closed would
shut down so i thought well maybe it's time to write a book and i've been asked to write a book
before and i've considered writing a book before but i never had the time so i just started writing
you know i didn't write in any chronological order i was writing in this short story format
and um had a great editor and we she would assign me stories and i would write them and send them
back and it was so much fun i loved it both of my parents were writers my father was a writer
my mother was a creative writing teacher so um you know the act or the art of sitting down and
writing i've always loved but i just never had the time to do it so i did well well done to you and
it's quite the read although dave some years ago uh on an mtv show that i was hosting you helped me
wax the legs of a 19 year old lad from the studio audience and i am shocked that that has not made
the final edit of your book what this is this is the chat i mean honestly it was a challenge to
decide what to put in and what to leave out yeah i wrote an entire chapter about uh that about waxing
uh but it didn't make a cut next book storyteller two or i'll just write an entire book on
waxing strangers legs on mtv i could do that too honestly it was a challenge to decide what
to put in the book because there's no way i mean i was 300 pages in and i hadn't even
mentioned the foo fighters yet wow okay like i've gotten that far i'm like oh my god like this i've
been in this band for 26 years i haven't written one lick in this book about my friends but then
i realized like you know there's no way to put it all into one book so we had to frame it in a way
that it made sense in the arc of the story i'd be interested particularly as you mentioned you know
your parents were writers the process as it were what was it a case of sticking post-it notes with
kind of buzz words up on the wall and did those buzzwords relate to specific stories when you
realized you wanted to make this into a book were there the dave grohl top three that has to go in
from nirvana that has to go in from the foods this about being at high school or did you kind of feel
your way through a little more kind of well you know it's funny when i started that instagram page
thing before i had the idea of doing the book i made a list of 30 or 40 stories that i would write
for my instagram page from like getting into a car accident when i was young and that's a hilarious
story to you know deeper more personal things and when i signed up to write the book i just
handed the list to my editor and i said okay you tell me what you want and she would just assign me
a couple stories and say all right you have two weeks to write those three stories go and i would
write them i couldn't imagine the the structure of the book yet i was just writing these things and
but yes i mean obviously there's some things that were very important to the story joining nirvana
um seeing my first concert when i was young the people in my life
that i've lost that i was really close to becoming a father it's like all of these things i knew they
had to be in the book i just wasn't sure how they would be sorted out some of it was really easy
and most of these stories i've told a thousand times to all my friends and they're sick of them
you know they're sick of hearing about the time i was hitting the head with a golf club or sick
hearing about the time i got to play drums i think he popped sick of hearing
there's so many of these oh not the swing dance with ac dc again dave for heaven's sake
yes you wrote a song with one of the beatles we know that dave you have to imagine
that as i'm writing these things i'm like oh god i hope someone doesn't know this story
when you talk about that you know the kind of serious weightier things that that you know
come to us in life which are the the death the untimely deaths of people that you love and on the
opposite side of that you have the birth of your children you know i'm a father to a little girl
one of the most incredible moments and all parents will know that did you find that
quite a therapeutic experience did you did you find it uh helpful to put it down in print
so to speak did it feel nice to to let that that out there for people to read and hear
how you were feeling inside yes absolutely the piece about losing uh my best friend jimmy
losing kurt um losing my father i waited that was the last piece that i wrote because i was
afraid to write it you know and in a way i sort of knew what everyone wanted me to write
and i didn't want to do that so i was just trying to figure out okay how am i going to write this
particular piece and i waited and when i hit send on it i realized i've just written a book and i'm
finished and so it's a really emotional experience as you're writing these things you're seeing your
your feelings or you're seeing your thoughts on paper it has a new life you know it's almost like
hearing yourself speak back some of it was kind of tough but you know i had i read the book for
the audiobook you know like that the audiobook that you can also i'm a massive fan of audiobooks
i've never listened to an audiobook in my life but i had to do one so i had to read the entire book
it was really hard man like it was just me and a microphone and a box of tissues
so there were parts where i honestly felt like you know the studio engineer was my therapist
and it was it got ugly it got a little it got a little ugly but you know i feel good that i let
it out for sure well absolutely and that's what you know people are going to take from the audio
book particularly with that delivery and take from from the the paper edition as well dave
grohl the storyteller tales of life and music is out now in hardback ebook and on audiobook
read by the great man himself dave it is always pleasure to see you even if it's in this kind of
zoomy way and congratulations on on a fantastic book and you know such an incredible life and
there are so many highs in here there are so many emotional touching moments this is a book
that's got thrills and it's got a real heart so i'm really pleased that you did this and this
is another one of the few things we can put down as a positive from kovid 19 and a global lockdown
dave gro i'll see you on the other side my friend take care it's good to see you take care